Visual LANSA Features

All the Productivity of Low-Code Without Losing Any Control

The LANSA Low-Code Development Platform

The LANSA low-code development platform accelerates application development by eliminating the need to master the multiple technical skills normally required to produce software applications. With LANSA, only a single skill needs to be mastered to build applications across all different mobile devices, browsers, servers, and cloud platforms.

Four Pillars of the LANSA Platform:

The four pillars of the LANSA platform shield developers from having to worry about how their project will be deployed across various devices, interfaces, and platforms. This enables them to remain focused on quickly delivering business applications.

Application Framework – Get It Right the First Time

Programmers can struggle with designing enterprise user interfaces and often miss the mark with user expectations, especially since users can have difficulty defining what they want.

A Better Way to Prototype

A key feature is the Prototyping Wizard. Prototypes can be defined in minutes, and designers can email a web link to the application so that users can review and provide immediate feedback. Application prototypes transform gradually and easily into the final working applications.

A Better Way to Develop

The Visual LANSA Framework was designed to boost developer productivity by providing an easy-to-use and intuitive development framework that hides and abstracts low-level functionality to achieve extraordinary levels of productivity and a shorter learning curve.

The application framework enforces user-interface design concepts that follow the standard conventions users find familiar. This model provides a design style where everything a user needs to do is just a few clicks away.

Language-Based Low-Code without Limitations

In even the best of the other low-code development platforms, when developers try to reach beyond the capabilities of the platform (for example, to implement complex business logic) the only remedy they have is to drop down into another IDE and code extensions in additional scripts and languages that are integrated with the other generated code. This is troublesome for a number of reasons.

Additional code interfaces through specific low-code platform extensions and/or APIs that confine and add to the complexity of the development.
The additional code artifacts need to be externally version controlled and configuration managed to coincide with the versions of the generated low-code application(s) for which the added code was written.
You would be introducing technology-standard version interdependencies between the additional code, the generated low-code applications, and the low-code platform itself.

These all sound like typical software engineering problems that can be managed and solved by developers as they often are thought of as the normal course of software development practice. They are indeed. But they are not without significant cost and consequence.

Business Rules Engine – Our Secret Sauce

LANSA low-code development platform allows business analysts the ability to define and maintain system-wide business rules and validation logic in a single location—external from source code. This reduces maintenance costs 50 to 80% and eliminates duplication of source code.

More Than Just a Rules Engine

LANSA’s Business Rules Engine is more than a dictionary of data definitions and validation rules—it promotes an entirely different approach to application development. Developers can also store reusable components, data visualizations, help text, and more to minimize hand-coding, maximize reuse, and standardize UI design practices.

Governing Your Data

LANSA Business Rules Engine automatically starts whenever an application updates business data so validation checks are never missed. Rule changes are easy. Change the rule in the Rules Engine and it is automatically applied in every program that uses that rule.

The Business Rules Engine keeps and enforces rules through independent Data Services Layer. It manages the execution of rules across all databases and server platforms so IT are no longer limited to a particular combination of hardware, operating system, database, and application.

Independent Data Services Layer – To Protect and Serve

LANSA Business Rules Engine keeps applications separated from the databases with which they work. The Data Services Layer makes this possible. In order to maximize the reach of the Business Rules Engine, the LANSA Data Services Layer is accessible from any program on any platform.

Not in the Database or the Application

Typically, rules are maintained either in code or at the database level. The downside of storing rules in source code is code duplication, potential inconsistencies, and difficulty managing changes. The downside of storing rules in the database via stored procedures, column validations, triggers, etc., is database lock-in because each DBMS has its own way of implementing rules, triggers, and stored procedures.

Completely Independent Data Services Layer

LANSA independent Data Services Layer provides a single access point for all data, regardless of format, location, and convention. LANSA programs inherently leverage the data service layer when accessing databases, making the application and database completely independent of one another.

Changes to rules inside the Business Rules Engine are reflected in the data service programs, allowing all existing applications to enforce the new rule without being recompiled.

What Makes LANSA So Special?

Developers become Full-Stack Developers

With LANSA, developers who need to reach application complexity beyond the limits of low-code can use the one powerful LANSA programming language for the client-side, server-side, and everything in between. When compared to traditional development methods, LANSA replaces 5-10 different programming skill sets.

Directly Integrate with Anything

Best of all, LANSA’s language is completely open and compatible with other technologies. Besides being able to publish and consume RESTful services, LANSA also allows you to directly leverage any of your existing DLLs, .NET components, ActiveX controls, JAR files, etc. So integration between your new Visual LANSA applications and your existing application and data infrastructure is easy.

Simplify Development without Limitations

LANSA is the best of low-code because you have all of the speed of producing high-quality, high-scale applications for any device or form-factor with the ease of visual drag-and-drop design. When you combine that with the power of one programming language, you get low-code without limitations.

Additional LANSA Features

Core features

Build web applications that look and perform like desktop applications
Build native or hybrid mobile apps
Build desktop applications
Automatic screen generation
Application generation wizards—create applications by answering a few questions
Comprehensive platform portable language
Component-based development—for building reusable components and sharing across projects
Platform portable Business Rules Engine
SQL support—create tables and views via SQL
Cross-platform database access including triggers and business rules
LANSA enforcement triggers—apply business rules for every program that accesses a database
Build multitier applications and partition the application between the client and server
Multilingual and DBCS language support
Intrinsic functions—includes floating point and integer arithmetic and binary string conversions
Various encryption capabilities including TLS/SSL
Data modeling—view entities and relationships with the LANSA Visual Modeler
Configuration management, task tracking, and version control support
Object-oriented (OO) development and procedural style development
Supports design patterns like MVC and SOA
LANSA’s fast, secure, and scalable middleware optimizes communications between the server and client
components of the applications
Integrated Microsoft SQL Server Express database for development and testing

Development Environment

Independent developer or team development – Visual LANSA supports your choice of development team structure from individual developers to large teams
Developer environments – Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise using Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or Sybase SQL Anywhere
Develop in the cloud or on-premises
Desktop installation and upgrade tools – the Visual LANSA installation is simple and fast, just answer a few questions to define your choice of deployment
Advanced visual development environment—one customizable IDE for all projects
Syntax checker and code completion—helps developers to create correct code quickly
Programmable templates—library of business-oriented application templates
Client and remote server RDML debugger

Deployment

Deploy to single or multitier Windows, Linux, and IBM i (System i, iSeries, AS/400) servers
Partition the application – decide where parts of the application will run, partitioned between the client and server dynamically
Deploy client applications—deployment tools to distribute client-side application components
Deploy web applications to the internet, extranets, and intranets
Deploy applications in the cloud or on-premises
Web applications support ChromeⓇ, FirefoxⓇ, SafariⓇ, or Internet Explorer 11Ⓡ or later
Native and hybrid mobile applications—deploy applications for access via mobile devices

DBMS Support

Microsoft SQL Server
Oracle on Windows, Linux and UNIX
Sybase SQL Anywhere
MySQL database
IBM DB2 on IBM i (System i, iSeries, AS/400) servers
Unicode support for files

Architecture Diagram

Technology Future Proofing

LANSA provides a unique application-development platform combining the best of both the low-code and rapid application development worlds.
LANSA enables IT to develop applications faster than traditional development because, in most cases, you just assemble business components and do not write code.
And for the instances where you need to write code, the LANSA low-code development platform makes it easy because developers use a single language.
Customers describe LANSA as their insurance against technology change.
It insulates them from being locked into old technology or having to constantly revise their applications for platform, operating system, or database updates.
Choosing LANSA is their way to avoid this technology trap, future proof their applications, and stay focused on achieving business outcomes.

Benefits of Using LANSA's Low-Code Development Platform

With its 30-year history, LANSA has a proven track record of providing technology insurance for businesses worldwide

Deliver the best possible user experience—mobile devices, browser, or Windows desktop.
Deploy applications to the server platform of your choice—in the cloud or on-premises.
Leverage application framework for a foolproof approach that ensures you get it right the first time.
Prototype new applications in real time with users to improve usability and acceptance.
Eliminate the need to hire full-stack developers or teams of different specialized skills.
Increase data integrity and reduce ongoing maintenance utilizing the Business Rules Engine.

No-Code to Full-Code: The New Spectrum of Application Development

This white paper seeks to explore the spectrum of application development methods, their different uses, and their pros and cons. It covers no-code, low-code, and full-code (traditional development methods) and explains their suitability for different projects, who should use them, and how they can be most effective.

Why Develop with LANSA?

LANSA Solutions for:

App Development

eCommerce

IBM i Modernization

Data Management

Professional Services:

Industry Examples for:

We have the tools to help you create mobile and web apps for shop/factory floor management, automating shop floor processes, improving job scheduling and allocation, meeting quality targets and better resource utilization.

We help you create lean, agile and demand-driven supply chains with apps that automate bespoke processes, eliminate spreadsheets and printed forms, integrate ERP and warehouse apps, simplify stock checking and more.

We help create a new generation of mobile and web apps for integrated processes between back-end systems and field engineers, improve job scheduling and quality including first-time fix and better resource utilization.

We digitally transform retail by automating processes, eliminating spreadsheets and printed forms, stock-checking and loyalty apps and simplifying retail processes with new apps that easily integrate with existing systems.

We help with innovative apps to manage financial product offerings, control the progress of applications and claims across the organization, deliver improved customer service and extend IT systems to customers and partners.